


You Get What You Need

by Penknife



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Established Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post-Dragon Age: Inquisition - Trespasser DLC, Rescue Missions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-14
Updated: 2020-02-14
Packaged: 2021-02-27 04:55:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22371409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Penknife/pseuds/Penknife
Summary: When Bull takes the Chargers into Tevinter to rescue Dorian, it's a necessary risk.
Relationships: Cremisius "Krem" Aclassi & Iron Bull, Iron Bull/Dorian Pavus
Comments: 21
Kudos: 202
Collections: Actually Adoribull Fic, Chocolate Box - Round 5





	You Get What You Need

**Author's Note:**

  * For [venndaai](https://archiveofourown.org/users/venndaai/gifts).



They’re on the trail of another bunch of Vints sneaking around near the border where nobody honest has any reason to be, and when Bull sees the lights of their campfires and the familiar shape of at least one slave wagon outlined against the stars, it’s tempting to just wade in and kill everybody.

“What do you think?” Bull asks while he’s getting that impulse under control.

“Venatori,” Dalish says, like she tastes something bitter in the air. He doesn’t ask her how she knows, because he’s not in the mood to hear that she’s just that good an archer.

Krem looks at Skinner. “Get us a closer look?” It’s a question, not an order, because while Skinner is the best at getting in and out of tight places, she’s also an elf in Tevinter. The best she can hope for if she’s caught is that they’ll figure she’s got some value in the slave market.

“On it,” Skinner says, already slipping forward toward the circle of light, because like everyone else who volunteered for this fucking mission she hasn’t got the sense to say “hey, this time you’re on your own.” 

Bull’s working through the most efficient way to kill everybody—hit them from three sides, Dalish can keep crossfire off the slave wagon, take the mages down fast before they can fuck everybody up—when Skinner comes back. He expects her to look pissed off, and instead her face is lit up.

“He’s here,” she says, a moment after Bull should probably have told her to report. “There’s a guard on the wagon, I couldn’t get the door. Could maybe have taken out the guard from behind—”

“Or you might have woken the whole camp,” Krem says. “This isn’t one where we can fuck around. How do you want to play this, Chief?”

It doesn’t change the math, not really, except that Dorian may try to help, which introduces a wild card into the mix. “Is he conscious?”

“Barely,” Skinner says. “If he’s got any sense, he’ll stay down.”

“Well, that’s the question, isn’t it,” Bull growls. Nobody seems offended, which is probably a bad sign, in one way or another. “Hit them from three sides. Skinner and Dalish, you’re with me. Get him out and keep him out of the way. The rest of you, take them down. Fast and hard.”

“You heard the Chief,” Krem says, and Bull waits until he’s certain that the rest of the boys are in motion before he makes a charge for the Venatori lines.

Lightning flashes bright from Dalish’s staff, but he doesn’t need it to see the sentries. He knows where they’ll be, hears them moving and breathing for the few heartbeats before he smashes into the first one and takes him down in a spray of blood. The nice thing about Venatori is that it’s safe to figure that everybody with a staff is a combatant. He swings his axe in an arc that cuts a throat and breaks someone else’s ribcage open, and lowers his shoulder to smash through anyone else who gets in his way.

There’s general yelling and fighting going on around him now, and then a blood-black thickening of the air like he’s drowning in acid. He can taste the blood all the way down his throat, clawing at his chest from the inside, and then Dalish’s dispel hits like salt water in the face, stinging and cleansing. Skinner puts a knife through someone’s eye, and Bull fells someone else like a tree, and then they’re at the wagon, where between the bars Bull can see a familiar form struggling up to his knees, outlined all too sharply against the sky.

Dorian’s hands and feet are in shackles, but he’s trying for the lock on the wagon door anyway, and Bull has to love him for that despite being pretty sure Dorian doesn’t actually know how to pick locks.

“Get down, you daft shem,” Skinner says, and slaps Dorian’s hands away from the lock. “You’re being rescued.”

“I should have recognized the fact from all the screaming,” Dorian says. His voice sounds thick, more drunken than Bull’s ever heard when Dorian has, actually, been drunk.

“Gets rescued and complains about it,” Bull says. “That figures.”

“This is the critique,” Dorian says. “The complaint … will follow.” Skinner has the wagon door open, now, and the fighting is starting to wind down, Krem and Dalish closing in on the last of the Venatori in good form, so there is probably no actual reason for Bull to crouch down to put his body between Dorian and anyone who might come at him.

He does it anyway, getting Dorian sitting up outside the wagon with his back to the bars, shielded by Bull’s bulk from whoever’s still standing. Dorian’s face is bruised, and his wrists are rubbed raw where he’s been trying to get his hands out of the cuffs. Skinner starts picking the lock of the ankle cuffs, and Bull grasps the chain holding the wrist cuffs together and rips it in half.

“If you’re trying to impress me with your manly strength, it’s working,” Dorian says. There are bruised circles under his eyes as well, and his pupils are blown wide. “It’s your intelligence I question. Are you aware you’re twenty miles inside Tevinter?”

“More like thirty,” Krem says, coming up cleaning his sword. “We’re done here, Chief. No serious casualties. You could probably see that show for miles around, though, so I figure we double back, muddy our own trail, and strike out for the mountain safe house. You, me, Skinner, Dalish, and Stitches make the best time we can, let the rest of the boys mop up any immediate pursuit and catch up with us before we try the border.”

“Were you going to ask me for orders at any point in that?” Bull asks.

“No, because I remember you saying we weren’t under orders when we volunteered for this little excursion,” Krem says. “Come on, Chief. You aren’t thinking straight, and who would be? Let me take this.”

This is, possibly, the result of training Krem to be so damn good at this thing they do. “That’s fair. But leave Dalish with the rest of the boys, they’ll need a mage.”

“I’m not a—” Dalish begins.

“Not the time, Dalish,” Krem says. “Good to see you, Pavus, you look like utter shit.”

“Thank you, that’s what I always aspire to.”

Skinner has the shackles off, and Bull lets Stitches investigate long enough to decide there aren’t important broken bones before he hauls Dorian up to his feet. “Can you walk?”

“I’m famous for it,” Dorian says, and starts to fall down as soon as Bull loosens his grip. “ _Kaffas_.”

Bull steadies him so that he can’t crumple. “What did they give you, magebane?”

“Another dose this morning,” Dorian says. “It should wear off in a few hours. Shall we sit and have a nice chat while we wait?”

“Leave us one of the mules,” Krem says to someone, and then hands Bull the creature’s reins. Dorian looks at it skeptically. It looks at Dorian skeptically.

“I’m not sure I’ve ever ridden a mule,” Dorian says.

“How about less back talk and more leaving the scene of the multiple murders we just committed?” Krem says, supporting Dorian from the other side while Bull gets him up on the mule.

“It isn’t murder when they fight back,” Bull says.

“It’s been a while since I paid much attention to the laws of Tevinter, but I’m almost certain—”

“Is this a rescue, or a comedy routine?” Dorian demands.

“It’s only a rescue if we get _away_ ,” Krem says, a little despairingly, and urges them back the way they came.

It’s farther back to the mountain safe house than Bull would like to push it with a wounded man, but there’s nowhere short of there that they can camp in anything like safety. Stitches gets Dorian to drink most of an elfroot potion as they go, although Dorian’s clearly so nauseated from the magebane that he isn’t managing more than a sip at a time. It’ll help stop any internal bleeding and keep the raw places where the cuffs were from festering, but it won’t make the magebane wear off any faster.

Dorian isn’t complaining. In fact, he isn’t talking much at all. Bull gets it that he’s using all his energy at this point to stay awake and in the saddle, and so he doesn’t push it, even though he wants to hear the sound of Dorian’s voice. Eventually they find the trail up the mountainside. The last few yards Bull has to haul Dorian off the mule and pretty much carry him, and then come back and pretty much carry the mule, which tries to bite him for his pains.

It’s a cave, but there are pallets to roll out on the floor and a stock of food and water that Stitches has already gotten into to extract a waterskin. There’s a back way out, through a series of tunnels that come out much closer to the border with the Marches, but they can’t get the mule through that way. They’ll let the beast go once the rest of the Chargers catch up to them. By then Dorian will be fit to travel.

“Well?” Bull demands of Stitches, who’s cleaning Dorian’s cuts, which is at least winning token muttered protests.

“He’ll do,” Stitches says. There is an unaccountable tightness in Bull’s throat that cuts off whatever reply he meant to make.

“Then you can help cover our trail,” Krem says, and hauls the other two out to do it.

Bull sits with his back to the wall next to Dorian, and stretches out one arm cautiously. Dorian settles into its shelter without hesitation, which makes it a little easier to breathe.

“You don’t have to fuss,” Dorian says. Bull bends his head until his face is against Dorian’s hair and tries to slow his breathing to something that sounds steady in his own ears. Eventually Dorian spreads one hand against Bull's chest. “I do see why you might have been worried.”

“Yeah, clearly that was unnecessary, right?”

“Admittedly things were not going well.”

“Good thing we came to get you, then, isn’t it?” Bull says.

Dorian rests his head against Bull’s chest. “You’re right,” he says. “It is.” He doesn’t ask why Bull did it, which is good for a couple of reasons. It’s good because it means that maybe Dorian trusts that he’s loved. It’s also good because Bull would have to say things that feel too raw to say, _like you’re my heart, and I can’t live without my heart_.

“How about some more water?” he says instead.

“Yes, food and drink sound so appealing at the moment,” Dorian says, and Bull can see the queasy tightening of the man’s throat. Dorian doesn’t protest when Bull raises the waterskin to his cracked lips, though, and chases the water willingly with another mouthful of elfroot potion. “Please just tell me you brought wine.”

“I’ll buy you all the drinks when we get back to Kirkwall.”

“I can’t go to Kirkwall,” Dorian protests, as if he’s suggested a trip to the Korcari Wilds.

“I can’t exactly stroll into Minrathous, either, and you’re in no shape to travel on your own, so I figure you can get a ship from Kirkwall. And Varric will put us up until you’re ready to go back.”

“If I disappear, it will appear that the Venatori have successfully kidnapped me,” Dorian points out.

“If you stumble into Minrathous bleeding, it’ll look like they’ve kidnapped you. If you write to your friends from Kirkwall, it’ll look like you got invited to stay with friends in Kirkwall. That’s got to be better for your image.”

“Hmm,” Dorian says, and closes his eyes. He sounds like he doesn’t really want to argue, which is good, because Bull doesn’t really want to admit how much he wants to steal more time together right now.

By the time Krem comes in, Dorian’s asleep, or maybe more precisely has finally surrendered to drugged unconsciousness. “Anyone looking won’t find our trail,” Krem says.

“Good.”

“It’s nice when things work out,” Krem says, with a smile that crinkles the corners of his eyes. Bull is aware that Krem and Dorian are only sort of friends. Tevinter puts too much of a gulf between them, even after all the time they’ve spent fighting on the same side. Krem looks this pleased with having pulled off this crazy mission because he knows how much it matters to Bull. There are times when Bull can’t imagine what he ever did to deserve Krem.

“We’re not over the border yet,” he says gruffly.

“I know I’ll sleep better when we are,” Krem says. “Fucking Tevinter.”

“Fucking Tevinter,” Bull agrees. If Dorian wasn’t still trying to save Tevinter, their life would be a lot easier. He knows Dorian has to do it, just like he knows that he can’t save his own homeland, if it even needs saving. There are times when he still thinks he’s the one who’s lost, far from home and far astray from everything he was ever meant to be. This isn’t an easy path, but he believes more often than not these days that it’s the right one.

He doesn’t mean to sleep, but it’s been a couple of days since he has slept, and after a while the world fades out. He wakes once to help Dorian to their makeshift privy, and again to Dorian shifting restlessly in pain, Stitches already at Dorian’s side. Bull tells himself he isn’t going to sleep again, even when Dorian’s breathing eases. Skinner and Krem are talking in low voices by lantern light. Stitches lies back down and falls into immediate, snoring sleep.

When Bull wakes again, there’s a purple tone to the light that says it’s near dawn. Dorian is awake and more clear-eyed than he’s looked so far. “That stuff wearing off yet?”

In answer, Dorian makes a spark snap from his fingers. “Clearly,” he says. His voice is crisp but a little off, and he’s starting to shake, a fine tremor that Bull might not notice if Dorian weren’t still leaning against him.

“So it’s all starting to hit you, right?”

“Ridiculous,” Dorian says, sounding like he’s angry at himself. “I’ve been through far worse.”

Bull’s sure. He isn’t getting the impression that the Venatori indulged in rape or torture, just the casual cruelty involved in incapacitating a dangerous prisoner. He also thinks that Dorian does not react well to being kidnapped or drugged or threatened with blood magic. He thinks what Dorian needs is to take a long, hot bath and then be bundled into a fluffy bed while somebody brings them both breakfast on a tray, and Bull is going to make that happen, just as soon as they’re not in a cave.

“I know, this is your idea of fun, right?”

“I was bored,” Dorian says. “I thought, what would liven up my tedious days? I know, it’s a kidnapping.”

“I’ve got to hand it to you, kadan, you do know how to party.”

“Amatus,” Dorian says, and Bull thinks he means _I love you_ , but also, right now, _I need you_.

“Right here,” Bull says, and wraps his arms around Dorian, not holding him too hard but also not letting go. He plans to stay like that until he’s certain that Dorian knows he means _I need you, too_.


End file.
